


Your steady touch I love so much I'm sleepless

by readeption



Category: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 23:29:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11345358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readeption/pseuds/readeption
Summary: helen and gilbert's wedding night.





	Your steady touch I love so much I'm sleepless

**Author's Note:**

> words cannot express how much I love this novel.
> 
> specific tags: loss of virginity (gilbert's), first time (gilbert's), woman on top
> 
> basically a really romantic consummation. 
> 
> written in my best imitation of Anne's style and from Gilbert's point of view.
> 
> the title is from 'Steady' by The Staves.

I address this account not to my friend, J. Halford Esq., but to you, the reader, an anonymous and judicious figure.

* * *

And so it was that on that glorious day in August, my wife and I were transported to our new home of Staningley which wheretofore had been the scene of the happiest event of my life.

The initial staff introductions completed, our luggage deposited upstairs and our light supper taken, my wife and I retired to bed. We made our way up through the house, the sun descending delightfully beyond the brow of the hill. Deep, warm light came in rays through the windows as we walked the stairs and floors. At length she turned to clasp a doorknob, and my breath quickened in excitement.

She pushed the door fro, revealing a wide, comfortable room with a four-poster bed stood in the centre. She turned to me to take my hand, the door swinging back into its place behind us.

She cast a hand around the bedchamber, and I confess my breaths grew quick to think of the pleasure to be found here - to add to the pleasure already found, emotional and spiritual, there would be now this bodily element entirely new to me, my knowledge of which was limited to the breeding of cattle and sheep in Linden-Car.

She passed around the room to draw the curtains and light a candle on the dresser. In the darkness I gazed at the thick dark hair atop her noble head, and eyes that betrayed the deep affection of the heart within. I felt undeserving.

I awoke from my stupor just inside the room, and moved across it to stand behind her. She turned and looked up at me tenderly, taking my hand and kissing it.

I remembered the cattle and sheep in Linden-Car, and remarked to Helen that I expected this act was far gentler. She gave a small laugh, and then seemed to realise the extent of my inexperience. Something alit in her gaze.

She went a bewitching rosy colour, and I thought perhaps she was ashamed, ashamed to desire pleasure in her marriage-bed, or at all. I said to her in a low voice that I would be overjoyed to know her, to join with her in flesh as we had been joined in heart and soul for so very long. And if we could not yet be joined, I could at least please her in another way.

She undressed me tenderly, draping my shirt over a plush armchair in the corner of the room. Her hands traveled from my bare shoulders down my arms, and across my chest. I leaned into her embrace, her warm arms coming up around me as we kissed, and kissed again. She was still in her cumbersome dress, and breathless against her neck I mentioned this.

She turned around and allowed me to clumsily undo her corset and dress. It sank to the floor at my feet, and reverently I stood, naked, to pick it up and hang it over the back of the armchair. When I turned back around I was greeted with the sight of her in the candlelight, sitting naked and cross-legged on the bed.

She was beautiful. Her face looked up at me with a loving shyness. My own gaze drifted over her bare shoulders, her soft wrists, her breasts, her stomach, her hips and shins.

"Helen," I croaked, and stepped forward. She splayed out her limbs for me as though I had cast a spell. I knelt between her thighs and caressed her skin, which shivered and prickled beneath my hands. She murmured my name as I kissed her jaw, her throat, her clavicle; each inch of flesh was fragrant and soft and undeniably hers, and my senses were full of the sound of her and the scent of her and the taste of her, and my heart was full of the love of her, full of love _for_ her. I kissed her with abandon then, clutching my hand tight at her waist, and her own hands came around my neck to pull me down into the bed with her.

I pulled away to breathe, a sharp pain in my scalp evidence of her having tangled her fingers into my curly hair; she relinquished her hold with a breathless apology which I made clear was not necessary by way of kissing her again.

I retreated a little, and lowered my head to her breast. Her back arched up against my mouth as I hooked a dark nipple between my lips and suckled like a baby. Sweet moans fell from her mouth in a stream, a flood; I massaged her other breast with my hand, and felt again that twinge of having something forbidden, something I did not deserve - but she had given herself to me, this paragon, and had deemed me deserving, had shown she wanted me. Her praises as I pleased her were enough, but still more pleasurable were her unbidden sounds, the way that I was able to wring responses from her that I never had before, had never felt before.

My own manhood was throbbing almost painfully within my trousers, but in this position all I could do was press my hips against the mattress in the hope of friction. Helen wrapped her legs around my hips to tug me nearer to her. Hungrily I held her tighter to me, a growing fervour of excitement, longing and sheer happiness making its way across my body. At length Helen lowered her hand to my hip, to my thigh, and between my legs to palm me. I gasped against her breast, and showed my gratitude and love by moving to her other breast and teasing the nipple there too.

I felt suddenly a sensation across my whole body of ecstatic and immeasurable bliss; my knees gave way and I fell against my wife with a groan. I knew what had happened - I had spent - but experiencing release in the presence of another was entirely new, and the presence of another whom I loved, deeply, and wanted to please, even more so. She gently spoke my name, over and over, sounding overpowered by emotion. When I came back to myself I felt extremely embarrassed. I apologised - she assured me there was no need, "even, I would prefer it this way, and am -" her breath hitched - "rather pleased to have had this effect on you." She said that in fact my early release now might herald more energy later. I thought of her and of her needs. I raised my head and asked what she would have me do.

I wanted to ensure any next activity was not being tolerated by my wife but enjoyed, actively wanted. I asked her for such an assurance and she hastily gave it. She tugged at my curls tenderly with the heel of her hand against my jaw; I leant into her touch and purred like a kitten. I opened my eyes to find hers, dark with desire, intent upon me and filled with all the feelings that had followed me all the years I had known her, but which now had culminated in our marriage, our binding, and the union soon to take place amongst these sheets. We were both thinking of it now.

I asked her again how I could please her. She told me that perhaps I could use my mouth "somewhere else". It took me a moment to catch her meaning, and when I did I felt a peculiar mixture of confusion, awe and pulsing arousal. She herself was flushed and wanting, body pliant beneath my hands, and I must have been in a similar state.

I retreated further down the bed. A thatch of dark hair nestled between her thighs, which spread for me anew; I saw a glistening moisture there, in the candlelight, and reached out to touch it. She shivered. It was slick against my fingertips, and warm, and clear; her flesh was pink and giving. She guided my finger upwards from her opening towards a veiled bead. When I touched it, gently, her hips gave a slight cant. More touches yielded more cants, more moans, until once more delightful noises were flowing from my dear Helen's mouth.

I sucked on the finger. She looked down her body at me. She whispered my name.

I circled my tongue around this nub, this seeming centre of her nerves and sensations. Her legs convulsed around my head as I pleased her. I wrapped around it with my lips, reached up a hand to take her grasping one against her stomach. She was everywhere around me.

Her thighs began to tremble, and her fingers squeezed mine almost painfully. I took this as the signal that I was succeeding, thinking that perhaps this was the manifestation in a woman of what had happened to me; I squeezed her back, sucking hard on the knot of nerves between her thighs, feeling her ankles come up over my shoulders, everything about her hot and sweet and yielding, mine, and _Helen_.

She gave a cry and bucked against my mouth. I continued my ministrations until she pushed away my head, inhalations and exhalations rapid and satisfied. She looked down at me.

I said, roughly, her moisture still around my mouth, "No one has done that - for you, before?"

She shook her head.

"A crime," I declared, crawling up her body. I rested my head on the pillow beside hers. "A grievous offence."

She replied, "And one I hope you will remedy with many more repeats of that - of that -"

She closed her eyes with a sigh. She took a finger and swiped it across my mouth, shining in the candlelight. It was quicker-drying than water but not so quick as blood. She looked at it a moment, then back at me, and then she tangled her fingers in my hair again. I could not have been happier to be so marked. I took her mouth in a kiss.

I murmured to her that though I knew the rough nature of the act, I had no clue of the particulars. She replied softly that she would guide me. She lowered her mouth to my ear and asked me how I wanted it - those very words, sultry and slow and sending soft currents of passion across my stomach.

I pleaded for clarification. She explained that there were several manners, positions so to speak, which two bodies could assume for the act.

Feeling rather overwhelmed, and thinking that it would be best for her to take the lead, I communicated this to her; "Direct me, Helen, for I am yours."

She did me the blessing of kissing me again, over and over, along the shell of my ear and along the shaven skin of my jaw and my rough cheeks. And I felt so _loved_ , so immensely desired and _wanted_ , that tears sprung to my eyes as she held me.

All the joy and pain of our acquaintance and courtship welled up in me, and I kissed her with a new passion that took her by surprise. In a moment or two she was grinding her hips against me, in a throe of pleasure that only made my own newly budding arousal both the more severe and the more exquisite.

I pressed against her desperately, and in this way we moved for some time, until my need to be actually inside her became too much.

"Helen," I gasped aloud, against the sweating skin of her throat, and she answered with my name, my name murmured like a prayer.

She took me in, sinking her sex down upon mine. I entered her, my head falling back and my lips parting in ecstasy. We were joined, joined in every way possible. This was the thought in my head as we moved together in the act of love, that she was mine at last, truly, our limbs rolling together as slowly and warmly as the lilting, inevitable courtship leading to this blissful moment.

Gentle, tender movements gave way, as her breath quickened and her hands on my chest ground down in a sensory miracle, to something more passionate. She leant down to kiss me, continuing to work her hips.

My whole body was flushed and wanting and there was nothing in my mind but _Helen_ ,  _Helen_. I was half out of my mind with pleasure. She was not quite so insensible but she was certainly on the way there, with tight breaths against my mouth and her fingers clutching at my shoulders.

I had no idea how long the act was supposed to last, or how long ours lasted; what I was sure of towards the end was the unceasing stream of delightful moans and cries from my dear Helen's mouth, once thought so thin by me but now warm, plush and heavenly upon my skin. I can only hope that my own sharp breaths and exclamations - including some blasphemies for which I earned a reproachful, though still half-lidded, look - brought my wife as much pleasure as hers brought me.

She quickened her pace, rolling back and forth across the juncture of our thighs, suddenly dragging my hand from her flexing waist to her sex, where I sought and found the bead I had worshipped before. She bore down upon my eager hand and sex with greater fervour, and in a few moments was convulsing around me, amongst me, within me, for that is how it felt: a union as beautiful and complete as I had up to then only dreamed of. We were wed; she was mine; nothing could part us now, not even death. This I truly believed.

She rolled her hips once more and all the agitation in my body and soul vanished in a flood, bright, divine and blissful. Into the void came soft warmth as she brought our bodies close again, and kissed me again. I was exhausted, and irrepressibly happy. I told her so.

"Gilbert," she said, a susurrus against my cheek as she withdrew herself from me and stretched beside me on the bed. "Gilbert, darling. I don't think I have ever been more so."

Again I felt that sting of tears, and kissed her, and told her that it was the same for me, it had always been the same for me. Her face in the candlelight was open and beautiful and I could have died then, right then in that four-poster bed, with the same quantity of joy I have enjoyed ever since.

My spirit raw and open to hers, I relayed this, rewarded with such raptures of affection and happiness on her face that I repeated it until my voice was hoarse and she was against me again.

"Helen," I murmured later, her head resting on my chest and her loose curls splayed around me. She stirred.

"Helen, words are not enough," I croaked.

"I know," she said, and kissed me. "But we have no need of them anymore. Our souls are joined, are they not?"

"To my everlasting joy," I said.

"Sometimes..." she whispered in my ear, "reading your letters... I thought of this. Of finally being able to marry you, united with you." She kissed me. "And now I am... We are." A warm tear landed on my chin. "I never thought this would happen, Gilbert," she whispered. "But your constancy, your fidelity." She kissed me. "You had hope enough for the both of us."

"And you have faith enough," I replied, kissing her, "and love enough - although," I kissed her again, holding my lips against hers to mingle our breaths, "I would gladly compete with you on that front until kingdom come."


End file.
